The Scary Phase Between Breaking Free from The 9 to 5 and Entering The Entrepreneurial World

“Chances are the thought of leaving your day job terrifies you. This is normal and expected… good even.
When I left the bank that day, I had only a vague idea of what I would do. I made a little bit of money here and there online. It wasn’t anything close to a full-time living, but I knew it was a new market that was growing quickly. And with some hard work combined with my savings, I (naively) believed I could have a full-time business up and running within a few months.

It turned out to take almost 18 months for me to earn a full-time steady income. I went broke a number of times, was supported by my ex-girlfriend for a time and then moved back home with my mother. For most of 2008-2009 I worked 10-16 hour days and the majority of my projects failed and made little or no money.

It was stressful to say the least.

People ask me what motivated me through this period. The answer is terror. Complete and unequivocal daily terror.

I was absolutely terrified to fail. Granted there was some love in there as well (I loved my job and still do). But that’s also where the terror came from: the idea that I would never make money doing what I love; the terror that I’d have to go back to living off a job I hated; the terror that I would have wasted two years with nothing to show for it; the terror that all of my friends and family who thought I was crazy would be proven right.”

I think overcoming it shouldn’t be an aggressive process. As this way we focus on it way too much and eventually end up having more of what we’re scared of.

The better way is to choose to let it be, and then let go of it with peace and acceptance. But there’s also another thing we can do – use it as our momentum, the driving force that will get us moving every single day, especially when we don’t feel like taking action.

Mark Manson continues:

“This fear kept me up at nights, and more importantly kept me up at nights working.”

That’s how you become a hustler. If you’re not naturally productive and haven’t found your motivator yet (which is a must as you’ll have to work more than you usually do so that you don’t have to live an average life), you can use your fear as a driving force.

Why You Still Haven’t Quit Your 9-to-5 Job?

There are a few common reasons:

• you haven’t figured out what you want to do with your life if you don’t work every day;
• you don’t feel ready (And you’ll never be. Truth is there’s no better time than right now.);
• it’s too risky – you feel safer at your job;
• you haven’t planned out your ideal lifestyle (which starts with outlining the perfect day);
• you aren’t in the right environment;
• you haven’t planned your escape.

It (the escape) should look something like that:
– sell everything you have that you don’t need;
– calculate the amount of money you’ll need for your new lifestyle;
– figure out how you’re going to make money;
– if you can’t start earning right now, then save enough so that you can sustain yourself for at least 6 months – maybe in a cheap country – while working on your business.

Here’s what Sean Ogle says about making the mental shift from job security to uncertainty and from a paycheck to multiple income sources in this interview:

“When I left my job, my initial goal wasn’t even to start a business right away. It was to travel the world and then see what happened. So when I moved to Thailand and I was bringing in a little bit of income it was actually a nice surprise. I could live cheap, and I wasn’t expecting to have any income – so for that reason focusing on business as opposed to just adventure was a good move.

The secret to multiple sources of income, is not to try and have multiple streams of income when you’re just starting.
I worked on building one thing, and when that was stable, I’d consider starting something else. Otherwise you bounce around too much and don’t make enough progress on any one project for it to be sustainable.”

The Big Question: What to Do to Become a Location Independent Entrepreneur If You Haven’t Found Your Passion or Haven’t Yet Monetized It?

There are countless ways to start making money online, even if you have no knowledge or experience. Short term ones – which are fast and easy – and long term ones – which can sustain you for a lifetime, turn into passive income and can be scaled.

And you probably won’t believe that if you haven’t heard of any example or seen how many people have already succeeded.

I wasn’t sure if that was the case either before I did my research. Now one of my biggest sources of inspiration is reading at least 1-2 articles daily like the ones I link to in this post (plus a few others connected to my work).
And I think you should do the same.

Before you start, see what others have to say about the whole thing. They will encourage you, tell you what to do exactly, and – most importantly – they will tell you what not to do so that you don’t make their mistakes.

It’s a great thing to start making a little money in the beginning just to see that it actually works, and then give other things a try, come up with ideas, change your approach, and so on, until you find what works best for you.

It’s a process, remember that. You shouldn’t be waiting for a finishing line where you will just keep making money without doing anything.
In fact, you’ll probably enter new fields all the time, expand your expertise, partner with other entrepreneurs, try completely new things, etc.

Here’s Mark Manson’s answer when asked how he managed to travel the world without a ‘real’ job:

“The short answer is the internet. Before this blog, I ran a number of websites and projects that earned some money. Then I did some freelance work. Then I wrote a book. Then people started telling me to write more stuff and jump ahead five years and about 500,000 words and here I am.”

If you still don’t know what to start with to begin your new life, here are some things to check out:

Building a niche site.If you’re interested in that, read (a lot) more about it. The Internet is full of resources, most often it’s whole blogs on how to create successful niche sites and earn money without touching them after that.

It’s a subject worth exploring.

And some of the most helpful posts you can find are the ones by expert entrepreneurs who share everything you need to know to put things into practice right away. And we’re talking about creating a big business that can make you a lot of money if taken seriously.

Noah Kagan, for example, has published a post on the Tim Ferriss blog called How to Create a Million-Dollar Business This Weekend. And knowing what he’s achieved so far, I have no doubt his strategies are proven and can work for anyone if implemented correctly and with the right mindset.

“For some reason, people love to make excuses about why they haven’t created their dream business or even gotten started. This is the “wantrepreneur” epidemic, where people prevent themselves from ever actually doing the side-project they always talk about over beers. The truth of the matter is that you don’t have to spend a lot of time building the foundation for a successful business. In most cases, it shouldn’t take you more than a couple days.

We made the original product for Gambit in a weekend. “WTF?!” Yes, a weekend. In just 48 hours, some friends and I created a simple product that grew to a $1,000,000+ business within a year.”

Here’s more:

How To Start a Successful Business with $100
This is one of the most useful and motivational posts I’ve seen in a long time. The Start Up Bros have asked a big number of famous online entrepreneurs the following question:

“IF you had no idea, zero entrepreneurial experience and under $100 in your Paypal/bank account, what would you do in the next 90 days to launch a profitable Internet business?
What niche would you tap? What would you sell or promote? What would you avoid?”

And I can assure you that most of the answers are so detailed that you can take one and invest the necessary amount of work and time during the next few weeks. And if you do your research, do things right and are focused, you’ll actually make your first dollars outside your job.

It’s something the person has already succeeded in so you don’t need to question whether it works or not. And once you make that first sale, land your first client or see your site successfully monetized, you’ll make the most important step from an employee to entrepreneur.

You’ll see that earning money online is possible with the right strategy. That if you do the work first and offer value to people, they would gladly give money in return. And that it’s much more satisfying to work for yourself and create many side businesses in order to have multiple income streams – which is ten times more secure than any paycheck will ever be.

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As I expected, this post turned out to be longer (again). It’s because I’m passionate about this topic, want to inspire people to explore the beautiful options I’m talking about here and have so many great sources of information I want to share.